Price calculation for SEO

Can we set up a pricing standard based on ranking?

[Neticman]

I wonder if we can set up a formula for billing customers according the ranking we get them.

I would use both google position and number of pages under the keyword...

For instance, letīs say I manage to rank my page second among 100,000 pages. I could charge =

$0.02 x total pages / ranking =

$0.02 x 100,000 / 2 = $1000

I know that some companies charge much more than that, but they do not guarantee any results. Others make promises that are fishy, like "Be in the top of the ranking for only $49"

Does this make sense to you? Any other formula suggested by SEO experts?

Thanks for your input!

[JayC]

There's a serious flaw in most pricing systems, or guarantees, that are based on rankings: it's easy to get high rankings for worthless terms.

I could take almost any website and "guarantee" a number one ranking for it, as long as I get to pick the phrase. Then, grab a fairly unique four or five word string from their home page and, presto! Number One, without doing any work at all! :)

Seriously, that's an extreme example but it illustrates the point, and the approach that a lot of SEO firms use: include some noncompetitive terms that no one else is trying to get rankings for. Of course, they won't generate traffic, but they'll give you something to bill for or let you meet your guarantee. But your client will often be much better off with a #10 ranking for a competitive term than with that kind of #1.

Your example goes a little way to address that, by including the number of hits the search query brings in the equation. But the fact still remains that the number of hits a term brings isn't an accurate measure of the competitiveness of the terms.

I guess I'd just advise that if you were to take this kind of approach, you should have very clear discussions with your clients about what it all really means. It's something that could easily facilitate deceptive practices.

[tedster]

In the past few months I've seen a growing number of articles in magazines and online, explicitly saying that any SEO offering guaranteed rankings is a scam. The claim is that guaranteed rank is one of the principal signs that the company you're considering may not be above board.

I assume that this isn't universally the case, and that some legitimate SEO businesses might still promote their services with some kind of guarantee. But it's not a very solid approach to the business these days for many reasons, and even more so with the press giving "guaranteed" rank offers a serious black eye.

A much better quantified structure could be based on some measure of growth in traffic, which "should" be closer to what the client is looking for anyway.